SURPRISE, Ariz. - The Rangers opened spring training Wednesday under a gray Arizona sky. They will open the season in six weeks. Before the year is over, they will retire Adrian Beltre's number and close the stadium that helped give the organization credibility.

And the most important day of them all, well, it may have already passed.

Without a pitch, a hit, a hire or a press conference.

On Monday, two days before pitchers and catchers reported, 180 members of the baseball operations staff gathered in an auditorium at the Wigwam Resort about 10 miles from the spring training facility for a day-long retreat in which GM Jon Daniels and new manager Chris Woodward laid out the plan for the team's vision.

It was not an exercise in inspirational quotes, motivational speakers or organizational cheers. For nine hours, and then in smaller groups at dinners all over the West Valley, the baseball operations department absorbed the vision and was charged with starting to implement it.

It was an important day in the rebuilding of the organization.

"Absolutely so," Daniels said. "It was overdue. It was time. Given the amount of change we've had and getting everybody aligned and on the same page is a big priority for us."

Overdue? The last time the Rangers held a meeting of this magnitude was 2007. Daniels was still in his 20s. Elvis Andrus was not in the organization. Buck Showalter had just been replaced by Ron Washington.

Since, the Rangers made an organizational-transforming trade that accelerated a rebuild, Nolan Ryan came and went, reached two World Series, the postseason five times and changed managers twice. The organization, though, fell behind contenders in research and development and struggled with communication initially in the front office and, most recently, between the major league clubhouse and the minors.

To return to contention, Daniels had to remake the roster, the front office and, to some extent, himself. That culminated with 55 new faces in the Monday meeting. Many of them are new hires for positions that didn't exist a year ago. For example, the Rangers have nearly doubled the size of their research and development department to about a dozen full-time staffers from a year ago.

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"The vision has changed," said senior director of medical operations and sports science Jamie Reed, who is one of about 30 members of the staff that remain from that 2007 meeting. "It had to. The way we did things in 2003 and 2008, so much has changed. This just got everybody on the same page and made everybody feel like part of the process. It took a lot of the fences away from between departments."

The Rangers built their AL dynasty on scouting, particularly in the international market. They lost a degree of that edge when MLB instituted caps for international signings. Other clubs invested heavily in R&D to help their players improve, often at the expense of scouting departments. The Rangers' goal is not to go in one direction or another. It is to fully integrate scouting and R&D so the two sides, often at odds with one another ever since "Moneyball" cast scouts as old and out of touch, are collaborative, not confrontational.

"The biggest detriment in a lot of organizations is the lack of collaboration," new manager Chris Woodward said. "One thing we've stressed is collaboration. And they want to do that. They want to learn from each other, to cross over into other areas. Our players will benefit from that because they are going to understand that we are going to collaborate and it's going to help us be more efficient."

Throughout the day, the Rangers had panel discussions to talk about baseball and to get opinions from both scouts and analysts. The idea was to foster conversation and understanding. But there were individual speakers, too.

Pro scout Mike Grouse, who was responsible for the drafting of Travis Hafner and Ian Kinsler among others during his 28 years in the organization discussed his individual evolution from old-time scout to a guy who blends what his eyes and ears tell him with the data supplied to him. Two weeks ago Grouse received the organization's Scout of the Year award; on the same day, he spent two hours getting a basic course in analytics.

"This is a process; it's all going to take some time," Grouse said. "But this was straight talk. There was no B.S.. It was not a cheerleading camp; it was a work camp. And I think it made sense to people. We left thinking that we've got a lot of work to do, but that our car is going down the right street. Now, the we've got to put some gas it and accelerate. There was no way you could leave there, thinking this was a waste of time."

Minor league pitching coordinator Danny Clark, entering his 14th season, also spoke. And he listened.

"This was about getting the culture re-established," Clark said. "I think we needed to hear the voices that we heard. It was the first time since 2008 or 2009 that I felt very secure in where we are headed. That's true. But, what I said, too, was that the actions after the meeting are what are most important."

On Monday, they unveiled and refined the vision.

On Wednesday, they began in earnest to put that to action. It is what the rest of the year is all about.